You've probably heard about "good carbs" and "bad carbs" and this web site is totally dedicated to the "good carbs".
After my husband was diagnosed with type 2 PRE-diabetes we began gathering all the data we could find on diabetes. It became a race to see who could find the best answer to the many questions we had. The biggest question we probably had about diabetes was "WHY ME"?
Why does one get diabetes? The most likely answers we found to "why me" was because you were probably born with the gene that causes diabetes and you're lacking in exercise and eating so many carbohydrates, bad carbohydrates, that your body cannot process them which, together, have all caused a large weight gain. Yes, it's a vicious circle, and those of us who have spent most of our lives fighting what seems to be a losing battle with weight can now learn a better way to eat, thereby taking care of all these problems in one shot!
Eating low carb is NOT A DIET! Eating low carb should become a way of life, eliminating the need for a diet permanently. Eating low carb is FUN! How, you ask, can eating low carb be fun? Do you like to eat? Do you like to cook? Read on and I'll tell you how low carb can be fun!
We recently signed up for a class at our local HMO to learn how to live with chronic conditions. In that class we met some wonderful people, people who live very different lifestyles from ours, yet similar in many ways. Some are overweight, some are not, some have diabetes, some do not, and some have other issues that have led them to seek help and get themselves back on the track to feeling great and being happy.
During one of the class meetings we began to discuss ways of eating and the recipes started flowing into the classroom. Along our journey to get back into shape and stay that way, we've tested some very good recipes and some not so good ones. Needless to say, these recipes can be a real eye opener, showing how one came to need a low carb way of life in the first place! Even though some of the recipes appeared to be low carb, they had ingredients that I knew were NOT low carb, so when someone thought they were eating properly to help themselves lose weight, in fact, they were sabotaging themselves!
Low carb eating is not about cutting out dietary fats, nor is it especially about calorie counting, although calories DO count and if someone tells you otherwise, they're not telling you the truth!
Think about this: If your body only requires 2000 calories a day to function properly and you're eating 2,500 calories a day, you may still be ok for a while, as long as you're getting enough exercise to burn off that extra 500 calories each day. That's a lot of exercise, by the way! Since one pound is equal to 3500 calories, in the course of just one month you've eaten 15,000 extra calories, enough extra calories to have gained at least four pounds in just one month if you're not exercising or burning them off! If you multiply that four little pounds by 12 months, you have managed to pack on an extra 48 pounds in one year. Keep in mind that you should never, under ANY circumstances, go below 1200 calories a day unless supervised by your doctor!.
Now that you see how easy it is to gain weight so easily and quickly if you're not paying attention to calories in vs calories out, you're probably asking yourself what you need to do to keep that from happening. The answer, in a nutshell, is to develop a low carbohydrate eating plan that works for you, a plan that keeps you feeling satisfied and is easy to follow. If you're anything like me and you're hungry all the time and the plan isn't easy to stick with you're not going there! Fortunately, eating low carb means eating OFTEN, so you WON'T get hungry! Finally, an idea easy to put into action!
Portion control is one of the most important ways I can think of to put your weight loss plan into action! If you're eating too much of a good thing you'll still be eating more calories than your body can handle. One of the things that seemed to work for me was simply to keep telling myself that there is plenty of my favorite foods available and I can have more another time if I want it. Click here for some great Portion control tips.
Believe it or not, eating low carb ELIMINATES YOUR FOOD CRAVINGS and makes you feel satisfied. You can eat at your normal meal times or you can, to quote our daughter, graze all day, snacking whenever you feel hungry. What do I mean by "snacking"? I mean that you can eat smaller amounts of foods that satisfy your hunger. If you spread these "snacks" out during the course of the day, you can eat six or eight times a day. We're also of a mind that this also helps boost your metabolism!
Where to start? My first suggestion would be to go to www.fitday.com and sign up for a free account where you can enter all of your daily food intake and see exactly what you're eating. Once you know what you're eating it will help you decide where changes are needed. You can then make informed changes and track your eating habits on a daily basis. You can also track your exercise (or lack of) and see where you need to make changes to help you burn those extra calories.
Once you've taken off the weight you want to lose you can still "have your cake and eat it too" by following the low carbohydrate way of life permanently and using the many recipes you'll find on this web site. (Be sure to check back often as we'll be updating and adding recipes from time to time!) By this time, you'll be in the habit of eating the low-carb way and won't WANT to go back to the old stuff...in fact, it won't even TASTE good anymore!
Be sure to work your way through the many links provided that lead to other low carb web sites and you can double, or even triple your recipe file.